There Are Seasons
by RiseAgainPhoenix
Summary: SLASH Clark, Lex, the decades between them, and the same argument again and again. 5000 words, partly futurefic


They've had this argument a million times before

Title: There Are Seasons

Summary: Clark, Lex, the decades between them, and the same argument again and again.

"It's never enough for you Luthors, is it?"

They'd had this argument numerous times before. The precise number was starting to grow beyond Clark's ability to accurately estimate it, and it kept climbing. The stupidest thing was, it was the same argument every time, over and over again.

"I save your life, I give you my friendship, and I welcome you into my family, but you just keep wanting more from me."

"What, the truth is too much to ask for?" Lex sounded tired, like he couldn't even muster up enough energy to make his bitterness convincing. He was getting quite habituated to their well-rehearsed dialogues; he was only saying his assigned lines.

Clark, in a sudden change of heart (or sudden change of tactic), moved to stand right in front of him, not stopping when he got there but backing Lex up until he hit the edge of his mahogany desk. Lex couldn't escape his wide eyes. "This isn't about truth, Lex," he said softly. "It's about how you can never just let it go." He paused to reach down, and for a heart-stopping moment Lex thought he was reaching for his hip, but Clark merely ran his finger along the laptop on Lex's desk—the laptop that was continuously replaying a state-of-the-art simulation of that day on the bridge. The little pixelated Lex-figure crashed over the side, again and again. "It's not healthy. You need to stop obsessing over it."

Lex knocked him away brusquely. "And you need to stop lying to me."

He couldn't see the point of this, any of this. So what if he was interested in researching the most important event of his adult life? It was his free time, his computer, his study, in the privacy of his own home. Clark had no right to impede his research, and even less right to get angry about it. Did Clark really come over so they could have this conversation yet again? Maybe they should start recording it. Next time, Clark could just play the tape and save himself a trip.

Lex found himself pulled out of his thoughts by the sensation of hot breaths gliding across his lips. "Clark, what—" He was trapped, strong arms on either side of him and his solid hardwood desktop digging into the small of his back. He didn't dare look up, and at his eye-level all he could see was the flush of Clark's throat, Clark's adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed thickly.

"You're right. I need to stop lying to you."

That was all the warning he got before finding Clark's fumbling lips (god, _fumbling_. His innocent, fumbling, teenager lips) all over his own, impossible to deny.

"Is this ever going to be not awkward?" Clark asks Lex, his mouth brushing the shell of Lex's ear and his voice a rough whisper. For a second, he forgets where they are and who they've become: he's just Clark, whispering in Lex's ear.

His reminder comes in the form of Lex harshly straightening his tie before answering with an abrupt "No" and walking out of the utility room.

The inappropriateness of the situation (they're at a _fundraiser_ for _leukemia research_, for fuck's sake) comes crashing down on Clark as soon as Lex closes the door behind him. He is suddenly and acutely aware of the fact that this is not a bedroom or a home or even a barn. It's only five cheap minutes of neither of them having any self-control. When they're done, they have to walk out of it and walk back into their real lives.

Clark counts to a hundred in his head before exiting, so it doesn't look like he was just in a locked utility room alone with Lex Luthor. And then he rearranges his own tie and steps out into the universe where his day job is to destroy Lex's empire and Lex's night job is to destroy him.

"You're so amazing, Lex," Clark said, his lips hot and swollen, his hair tousled and his collar askew. He shifted on the hay, moving even closer to Lex, his eager hands sliding effortlessly up his thighs.

The full autumn moon outside the barn window seemed wrong, somehow. Their clandestine meeting called for a murky, moonless night, not that bright orb hanging pure and unashamed in the clear sky. It didn't fit the moment.

"We should've done this sooner," Clark continued, unaware that the moon was all wrong. That this was all wrong.

Lex pulled away a little, licking his lips and gathering his thoughts. "Yeah, about that…" he began, his voice roughened by Clark's omnipresent hands. He swallowed, hard. "I think we should slow down."

"Alright, sure. We can take it easy." Clark backed off a hint of a millimetre, just enough for Lex to somewhat attempt to breathe again. "We have all night. My parents won't be home until tomorrow morning."

"That's…not quite what I meant."

A little puzzled, Clark sat back further. "Okay… So what do you mean?"

The anticipatory joy in those wide eyes made it difficult, but the guilelessness in them made it absolutely necessary. "Clark, I don't think we…I think we're just going too far too fast."

"What are you trying to say?" Wariness edged into his carefree voice.

"I think…" He faltered as his eyes fell upon Clark's red mouth. This was ridiculous; Lex Luthor never faltered. He steeled his resolve. "We can't do this right now."

It was strange, how Clark's eyes could be as soft as the corn tassels blowing across the field but turn hard and cold in an instant. "I'm guessing you don't mean we should put it off for a few minutes? You're saying 'not right now,' but what you really mean is never."

"You're _sixteen_, for god's sake."

"I'm old enough to know what I want," Clark said, laying a hand on Lex's hip purposefully.

Lex brushed it off and then stood up, equally purposefully. "I'm not saying never, Clark," he said softly, reaching down to touch his cheek. "I just don't want you to grow up and find out you made a mistake. Your friendship means a lot to me, and I would rather be patient than risk losing it." With that, he turned to walk down the barn stairs.

Halfway down, he stopped at the sound of his name.

"Lex." Clark leaned over the railing to look at him. "What does this mean? You know…for _us_?"

Lex's neck hurt from craning his head back to look up at him. "It doesn't change anything," he promised, trying to smile. "We'll still be us. I'm just giving you a chance to make sure that's what you want to be."

"You ever wonder if Superman and Lex Luthor have a romantic history?"

Lois says it nonchalantly one day, when they're having a quick lunch on a park bench. She doesn't mean anything sly by it, isn't even looking at him out of the corner of her eye or anything, but it still manages to make Clark choke.

"Why would you ask that?" he wonders once his coughing fit clears up.

Lois shrugs and takes a bite of her sandwich. "I don't know. It just always seemed to me like they either had something or still have something."

The answer is both, Clark doesn't say.

"There's so much sexual tension—they just have such an _intense_ relationship, you know?"

"Yeah, they hate each other intensely," Clark points out mildly.

"But they're men. Men aren't capable of having emotionally complex relationships without involving sex somehow."

Clark ventures to say, "Superman isn't _technically_ a man…"

"Whatever. He's a male." Lois says it like an indictment, like it's the most abhorrent thing anybody could possibly be, before taking a decidedly larger chomp out of her sandwich.

They leave it at that.

"So you're going with the lovely Miss Lang, I presume," Lex said, passive aggressiveness creeping into his voice the way frost was beginning to creep into the fields.

Clark was too happy, too eager for his friend to share in his excitement, to notice the slow change in Lex's demeanour. "Yeah, I'm pretty excited. I never thought she'd say yes!"

"Right." The air between them was incrementally colder than it was before.

"What's wrong?" Clark asked, only just starting to register the temperature change and genuinely puzzled by it.

"Nothing. You are going to spend a romantic evening with the girl on whom you've had a crush since you were ten. What could possibly be wrong with that?"

Clark definitely caught his tone this time. "Come on, Lex," he said, flashing him his most reasonable smile, "it's winter formal. I have to go."

"With Lana." Lex went to sit behind his desk, a buffer between them.

"Yes, with Lana. What, don't tell me you're jealous. You're the one who said I should go out and do things like normal kids my age. Normal kids my age go to dances. It's not like I can ask _you_ to winter formal."

Lex carefully arranged his fingers, steepling them neatly upon his desktop, and said nothing.

"Whatever," Clark scoffed, shaking his head. "Don't expect me to put my life on hold, waiting for you to work out your own repression issues." So saying, he turned to walk out of the study.

"I'm just trying to not ruin your future," Lex said very quietly, looking anywhere but at Clark's retreating back.

Clark just kept walking.

They're on a bridge, not made of wood this time but of trussed steal, sleek and urban but still undeniably a bridge. Lex makes a mental note to avoid all bridge-forms in the future, because they are apparently a motif signifying drama with Clark Kent. It seems that whenever they're on a bridge together, something that'll make Lex confuse love and hate invariably happens, and then Clark will invariably spend the next five years lying about it.

"We have you surrounded," Clark says, rather unnecessarily, because yes, Lex could _see_ that they have him surrounded. Superheroes on either end, and Superman himself a mere five paces away. "Just give yourself up."

Lex sneers. "I don't know the meaning of 'give up', Superman. That must be a term from your planet." He shuffles further away from Clark.

"Don't you dare jump," Clark says.

"Or what, you won't catch me? You'll just let me drown? I guess it would've saved us both a whole lot of trouble if you'd just done that the first time around."

"_Luthor_." His voice is a warning, but Lex doesn't know what exactly he's warning against. Don't bring up the past? Don't give away my secret identity? Don't tempt me?

"Why don't you just use your heat vision or fists of steel or whatever powers you have and kill me right now? That's what your little friends over there are all waiting for. I think they're wondering what the hold-up is, _Clark_." And it's true; they are. He can hear the whisper of capes and the impatient shifting of inhuman feet.

Clark's reply is not a direct response. "Lex," he says in a low voice, "just stop it already. You can't keep pretending like you're proud of what you've become. Come with me. We'll fix everything you've done, and then we'll—"

"And then you'll what, _rehabilitate_ me? Get over yourself." He stops short of spitting in Clark's face. He regains his composure somewhat and says, "Rest assured, my dear Superman…you've played your part in helping me become whatever it is you think I am."

With that said, Lex jumps off the bridge.

As he lands in the speedboat he has hidden underneath, it occurs to him that Clark could easily have caught him with his super speed. He doesn't bother thinking about it, though; thinking about the reasons behind Clark's actions only leads to self-loathing almost as intense as his loathing of Clark. He just jets away, leaving Superman to explain to his valiant companions how he let a cornered villain get away.

"I don't understand why you spend all of your time in Metropolis now," Clark groused. They were out by the barn, and spring was coming. The sunset was intensely beautiful, and Clark found himself irrationally hating the brilliant hues.

"My father…" Lex began, and then trailed off. He put his hands in his pockets and pretended to watch the pinks and oranges bleeding across the horizon.

"Your father what?"

"He's heard…rumours. About what I've been doing in Smallville. About what _we've_ been doing."

"We haven't been doing anything!" Clark said angrily. The truth of the statement was what made him so angry. "Not anymore. I never even see you anymore."

"No, not anymore," Lex agreed. "But it doesn't matter. Image is everything, and my father wants my image to be that of the well-groomed heir, not the millionaire playboy having suspicious friendships with underaged boys in the countryside."

"Why do you care what your father wants? You never did before. I thought you weren't on his side." I thought you were on mine, Clark mentally added.

Lex sighed. "It's…complicated. I have a few business ventures in mind, and I need to get close to him in order to be successful. I have to lull him into a false sense of security, get the inside track, before I can take him down."

A thought suddenly dawned on Clark. "All this time, you've been saying it's for my own good."

Lex turned to him. "What?"

"All this time, you've been saying it's for my future," Clark said, roughly shoving Lex in the shoulder, "and it's not, is it? It's about _your_ future. It's about you."

"What are you—"

"Don't lie to me, Lex. I know you want it as much as I do. The difference is, you're willing to throw it away for money."

"I'm not—"

"You're just like Lionel Luther," Clark continued, disgusted. "People don't mean anything to you. All you care about is business."

"I'm not throwing anything away!" Lex yelled, finally able to get a word in. "That's not why I'm doing this. This thing with my father, how he wants me back in Metropolis, it all came up after…after what happened last fall. I still stand by my decision to put whatever's going on between us on hold until you're older. My business decisions have nothing to do with that. I swear."

The sun had slipped below the horizon by then, painting Clark's face in shadows. "Why do I find it hard to believe you?"

"I swear, Clark," he repeated, almost pleadingly.

After a long moment of silence, Clark finally spoke. His voice sounded hollow. "So, what, are you moving back to Metropolis?"

"No. Maybe. I don't know yet. Look, it shouldn't matter. At the end of the day, we'll still be friends, no matter what I decide. That's the one thing that will never change."

Clark's eyes revealed nothing. "Yeah. Sure."

"Clark can get the inside track for us—he grew up with Luthor. I'm sure he can get us an in."

Just like that, every eye in the office is turned upon him.

"Uh…I don't know about that…" Clark struggles not to be mortified. It's a losing fight. "Um, Lois? Can I see you for a minute? Outside?"

He hauls her out of the meeting room by the arm, ignoring her irritated squawk. "Why did you say that?" he demands as soon as they're out of everyone else's earshot.

"Gee, I don't know, maybe because I was under the impression that you're a good reporter?" She smoothes her sleeve where he rumpled it. "I was wrong, obviously."

"Lois, I can't get the inside scoop for you."

"Well, why not? I mean, I know you're not as close as you used to be, but people always have looser tongues when they're talking to their childhood friends. It'll work out great: we'll get the dirt we need, you'll be everyone's hero, and White will love you until the next time you screw up."

Clark sighs. "Lex and I, we're not like that. You don't understand."

She looks at him like she's about to say something disparaging, but then something in her eyes changes and she just shakes her head instead. "You know, Smallville, someday you're gonna have to learn to toughen up. You can't let old feelings get in the way of your job."

"Yeah. Trust me, I know." Clark laughs without an ounce of mirth.

"Why would Lex do that?" Lana asked, furrowing her brow in adorable perplexity.

"Who knows? He's been making some crazy business decisions lately," Chloe replied, reading the article again. "This merger could put his company awfully close to the mob. Could the advantages really be worth risking his reputation like that?"

Clark let his eyes roam over The Talon, idly observing each patron and studiously avoiding the newspaper headline. "C'mon, Chloe," he said, trying to sound light-hearted, "it's not like we know anything about business. I'm sure he knows what he's doing."

Lana and Chloe exchanged a look of disbelief over the counter. "What are you _talking_ about, Clark?" Chloe demanded, looking doubly concerned now. "Lex is getting himself into ties with crime bosses, and all you have to say is that you're sure he knows what he's doing?"

"Well, what do you want me to say? Lex is old enough to make his own decisions." He paused, just long enough for his voice to turn cold, and added, "Trust me, I know."

Lana frowned. "But Clark…normally, you would be the first one to tell him he needs to at least think this over one more time. In fact, normally you'd probably be dropping everything right now to go talk to him."

"Yeah, well maybe I'm sick of talking him out of stupid decisions." Clark settled firmly on his stool and took a slow, deliberate sip of his coffee. "Maybe I just can't care anymore."

"And that's your reasoning, huh? We have 'different visions' for the world. That is the stupidest understatement I have ever heard. I want the world to be GOOD, and you want it to be for your personal use."

"No, you want the world to be _your version_ of good. Somewhere along the way, you decided that you're the only one allowed to say what is good for the world and what is bad. You're as delusional as Hitler ever was."

Clark glares at Lex. Their fight is a little surreal, as they're both naked and entangled in Lex's silk sheets, but he's learned to be unfazed by it. Their lives have always alternated between sex and fighting, with very little turnaround time. "Look who's talking about Hitler. _You_ want to rule the world."

"So do you, in your own way." Lex pulls the sheets away from him, wrapping them around himself and getting up to go to the adjoining bathroom. "Stop being such a hypocrite," he tosses over his shoulder.

Clark lies naked and exposed on Lex's big bed, seething at the ceiling. "I may be a hypocrite sometimes, but at least my intentions are always good. Can you say that for yourself?" he demands.

There is no response from the closed bathroom door.

"Dammit, Lex, open the door and talk to me. At least the old Lex had the guts to confront me face-to-face." Still no answer, and Clark is, for some reason, getting irrationally angry at the actual door itself. "But you know, I have to keep reminding myself that the old Lex is dead and gone."

Silence again, and Clark almost begins to give into his urge to do violence to the door when it opens with a click. "Well. You would know, wouldn't you," Lex says quietly, throwing Clark's clothes at him, "since you're the one who killed him."

"To what do I owe this pleasure, Mr. Kent?" Lex was all steady voice and smooth politician smiles.

Clark didn't bother with any preliminary niceties. "Stay the hell away from Lana."

Lex backed up against the front edge of his desk, leaning back to perch atop it casually. Clark had a sudden flashback to past times in Lex's office, a fleeting memory of times when the tension between them sprang from something entirely different. The fake smile on Lex's face transformed into a genuine smirk. "And why would I do that?" he inquired politely.

"I'm serious; leave her alone." Clark could feel his face getting hot, and he tried to believe it was purely from anger.

"I really don't see how my private life is any of your business," Lex purred, leaning forward.

Clark refused to back down. He drew closer to Lex's desk, looming over him and trying to seem more intimidating than Lex found him. "I know you're just using her. She deserves better," he said, glowering.

Lex looked up at him, his smirk apparently permanently plastered onto his face. "You would know."

Clark clenched his fists and told himself he didn't want to hit Lex, because that would've meant he cared. "This isn't a discussion," he ground out between his teeth, "this is an ultimatum. Leave us alone." Us? He didn't mean to have it come out like that.

Lex either didn't notice the pronoun use, or ignored it in favour of something he'd always responded to quickly. "I'm sorry, are you _threatening_ me?" Lex asked, widening his eyes with mock indignation, that damned smirk still on his lips.

"This isn't a game," Clark replied darkly.

Finally, that sadistic little smile slid off Lex's face, to be replaced by something remote and unreadable. "Actually, Clark," he said tightly, "it kind of is a game. You made up the rules."

Clark wondered for a brief second if this was how it was going to be for the rest of their lives, constant riddles instead of talking like normal people. "Lex—" Clark hated how his voice involuntarily dropped a few registers into something intimate and almost gentle. "Whatever you think I'm doing to you, I'm not." Because that wasn't vague at all.

Lex understood what he meant anyway. "Yes you are. You really, actually are."

All at once, Clark lost the self-righteous anger he had going into this. He felt deflated, like something had just been set in stone and there was no longer anything he could do to change it. "Whatever," he said softly, backing out. He stopped at the door. "You'll stop seeing Lana, right?"

"Have a nice life, Clark."

"How did we ever get to this?" Lex wonders aloud. Clark can tell he's already a bit drunk. Jesus. It's barely eight o'clock, and he's already a bit drunk.

"I don't know," he replies. Another thing he doesn't know is why he keeps coming. For all Lex's kryptonite gadgets and security measures, he always leaves the balcony window wide open on certain nights. Clark's developed an almost Pavlovian response to it. The window opens, and he shows up at Lex's penthouse without fail…and he doesn't even know why.

Lex is sitting at his dinner table, a glass of scotch in hand. The length of the living room spans between the table and the window. The length of something else entirely spans between the two of them. Lex tosses back his glass.

Clark wants to step inside, but he has things to do tonight, and he doesn't know if he can do them with a steady hand if he has to deal with a drunken Lex right before. So he just stays on the balcony instead, his stupid cape whipping around in the biting wind, his face carefully devoid of all expression.

Across the vast distance between them, Lex peers at him wistfully. "You know, I would've taken a bullet for you."

Clark clears his throat and trains his eyes on the wall just above and behind Lex's left ear. "Yeah, well, I guess the difference between us is that I never stopped being willing to take bullets for you." He isn't proud of it when the tiniest edge of bitterness escapes his control and seeps into his words.

The sound of glass shattering pulls his eyes back onto Lex. The remains of the scotch glass lie all over the floor, and Lex walks through them with burning eyes. "No, Clark," he says when he's mere inches away from the window. "The difference between us is that I found out bullets can't hurt you, and you never even bothered to tell me." He slams the window shut on Clark.

Clark didn't know when or how Lex found out. (Which, if you thought about it, was sort of strange, considering how careful he was about keeping one eye out for all the people who knew his secret and the other eye out for Lex.) All he knew was that one day, he woke up and realized that the dynamic between them had changed.

(Which, if you thought about it, was even stranger, considering how at that point in time they weren't interacting with each other enough to even _have_ a dynamic anymore, and had in fact almost stopped interacting entirely.)

It took him about two days to call Lex, to find out exactly how much he knew and what he planned to do with the information. Physically phoning Lex felt odd—after years of simply hitting number two on his speed dial, his fingers fumbled around on the keypad, awkwardly punching each number. Lex picked up after three rings and hung up after ten minutes. In those ten minutes, all Clark could find out was that Lex knew just about everything, had known for at least a week, and didn't at the moment plan to do anything with the information except use it as yet another reason to hate Clark.

It was at once the most unenlightening and yet most enlightening conversation Clark had ever had. It was what made him decide to visit Lex at the penthouse, so many years after Smallville.

And that was how it began, really.

It's fast and it's unpredictable, but in a completely predictable way. The bedroom's not close enough, so Clark has Lex pushed onto the desk where he probably plots Clark's destruction whenever he has free time. Papers scatter, and then Lex's buttons scatter too because Clark doesn't bother undoing them. He just yanks, and they end up bouncing all over Lex's shiny hardwood floors.

Clark is surging forward, mouth fastened onto whatever bit of skin he can reach, and Lex is struggling like he's trying to get away, but the fingers digging into Clark's shoulder blades say otherwise. Their legs are tangled, most of their clothes are bunched up and twisted instead of properly off, and in the cold dark hush of Lex's apartment it probably looks like they're fighting. It's every single argument they've ever had, translated into urgent touches.

They move together, but not congruently. Lex is being difficult, keeping Clark from getting what he wants when really they both want the same thing. Somewhere in the back of Clark's mind, he's sure he's doing it right back to Lex. Eventually, they settle into a rhythm and neither of them is wholly satisfied with it.

In the wake of the grand conclusion, crushed documents, wrecked clothes, and all the other things they've ruined lie around them.

Except, if you thought about it, that wasn't how it began at all. How it actually began was that one time on that one day, on that one bridge over that one river. After that, they just fell into the same cycle of repetition, over and over and over. Like the steps of a dance, there were slight variations at each pass, but it ultimately came back to the same thing. Always.

They've had this argument a million times before. It's different every time, but they're basically just saying the same things over again.

"God, shut the hell up," Lex hisses, shoving Clark back against his priceless liquor cabinet.

"Why don't you?" Clark snarls, spinning them and slamming him back. Distantly, he hears something shatter. He really doesn't care.

Lex scrabbles at Clark's ridiculous costume, ripping it off and trying to scratch him in the process. His fingernails slide harmlessly over Clark's impossible skin, and no matter how hard he tries he can't get him to break.

Clark takes Lex's wrists, pulls them away from his skin and pins them above his head, holding them up in an iron vice. With his other hand, Clark grips him by the chin and forces their eyes to lock. Lex bites him as hard as he can when they kiss.

Their breaths are ragged and harsh, and it's claustrophobic even though they're surrounded by nothing but floor-to-ceiling glass. They're pressed cheek to cheek, and all Lex can smell is Clark's sweat. "You left me, you asshole," he says breathlessly, almost soundlessly, but he knows Clark has superhuman hearing and he knows he'd hear him even without it.

"You left me…"

"Where were you when I needed you?"

"You promised, you fucking _promised_…"

"God, I hate you…"

"Jesus, I love you so much…"

"Don't stop."

** end**


End file.
